In many ways George Osborne has been a disappointing Chancellor. The toxic inheritance of Labour's debt mountain, together with the rigours of coalition politics and the crisis in the Euroland, have left him with little room to manoeuvre.

But none of this really explains his failure to seize the high ground in rebalancing the UK economy away from finance and underpinning growth.

Let me be clear from the start. The bankers who have been, and will continue to dominate news bulletins; Stephen Hester, chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Bob Diamond, chief executive of Barclays, are not Jewish.

The search continues for a big idea to help rebalance the British economy and restore growth. In his autumn statement, George Osborne proposed some £40bn of "credit easing" to get cheaper credit flowing to small and medium-sized enterprises along with a boost for infrastructure spending to create jobs and investment in new capital projects.

The 'Occupy Wall Street' and 'Occupy London' movements are too easily dismissed as the actions of a bunch of middle-class cranks without a real cause. But like the 'Cottage Cheese' protests in Israel and the spontaneous youth protests in Barcelona, they are civil disobedience with real meaning.

The global crisis has placed sharp income disparities in the spotlight.